3D printed Tippman X7 Phenom Accessories

I recently bought an X7 Phenom and have really enjoyed it apart from my foregrip. I have not been able to find an off the shelf foregrip that is comfortable so I decided to model and 3D print my own. If you're into 3D printing I have posted the STLs on Thingiverse, feel free to download my rail mounting bracket to design your own accessories or try my complete grip. I will be documenting my various 3D printed mods, accessories, and experiments on this thread. If you have ideas for 3D printable mods, I'd love to hear them too!

There has already been some excellent 3D printed mods for the X7, but unfortunately the creator has yet to share the printable STL files. Hopefully he will someday, I'd love to print the front shroud he's designed. Pictured below -

If you could make plastic versions of the standard Tiberius T8.1/9.1 mags I will give you snugglz so hard!

And if you made extendos...

Yea, that could be done. I would need a lot of reference pictures to get all of the sizes right. Ideally, the physical mag so I would measure it will digital calipers. I may do the mag fed conversion on my X7, if so I would definitely be making and printing my own extended mags.

If you could make plastic versions of the standard Tiberius T8.1/9.1 mags I will give you snugglz so hard!

And if you made extendos...

Yea, that could be done. I would need a lot of reference pictures to get all of the sizes right. Ideally, the physical mag so I would measure it will digital calipers. I may do the mag fed conversion on my X7, if so I would definitely be making and printing my own extended mags.

You could print a mag well that is DAM mag compatible that way you can shoot FSR like a BOSS!

I'm curious exactly what a one piece mag body would cost to print. You wouldn't even need to clean up the the mags after printing as a way of saving time, producing more, and lowering the end cost. All you would have to do is put each mag and its respective parts in a bag and ship. Then the buyer would just have to clean up the rough mags and assemble.

Obviously you could work that out on a customer by customer basis and charge a little more to ship pre assembled.

p.s. I am assuming that the V2 ball pusher will cost the same as the V1.

If I send you my T8.1 mag then what is the turn around time and can I test out the prototype

I'm curious exactly what a one piece mag body would cost to print. You wouldn't even need to clean up the the mags after printing as a way of saving time, producing more, and lowering the end cost. All you would have to do is put each mag and its respective parts in a bag and ship. Then the buyer would just have to clean up the rough mags and assemble.

Obviously you could work that out on a customer by customer basis and charge a little more to ship pre assembled.

p.s. I am assuming that the V2 ball pusher will cost the same as the V1.

If I were to make a mag, I wouldn't sell it to others unfortunately. There are patents on these designs and to reverse engineer one, manufacture my own and sell them could obviously land me in some hot water. For now I'll mostly be designing my own riser rails, front shrouds, grips, etc. As for cost, I would probably guess one of the T8.1 mag would cost about $5 - $10 bucks in PLA plastic depending on how its printed (solid vs sparse fill for internal volumes).

If I send you my T8.1 mag then what is the turn around time and can I test out the prototype

Looking at pictures of the mag it looks like a fairly complex build. The fact that there is gas going through the stock as well could add more complexity. I wouldn't go sending your mag in the mail any time soon. If I do start experimenting with making mags, it would probably be for the Tacamo mag kit for the X7 when I upgrade my marker.

Hey Bob, what model did you print that on? I just ordered a QU BD Two up printer. Resolution should be comparable or better than the Makerbot, and the price can be as low as $200. Only downside is I think the print bed is kinda small, and the heated upgrade is kinda on the expensive side. But I have the capability to print. Which reminds me, do you know of anywhere that has files for the fakey mag that ships with the Phenom? I am not quite to that level of design prowess, but would like to be able to build my own Beta/drum mag for my SAW setup, and print it out, hopefully with some storage inside for a microfiber. And for printing the T 8/9.1 mags, go as strong as possible.

My suggestion to anybody looking to get stuff printed should check out Shapeways. They have a service where you upload a file, and they print it on their machines. That way all you need to do is get the files, and the liability is either on the consumer or the large company doing the printing, both of which I think Tiberius would not go after as hard as a hobbyist. I hope. But still, if you send something to them to be printed, my advice is to claim ignorance, unless what you are doing is clearly prohibited in writing on the site.
Or you could do like what I am doing, drop a couple hundred on a printer, teach yourself CAD, take a class at a local college/technical school/community college/online/whatever, and use the ideas in your head, and the skills you learn to help bring even more innovation to the sport. I have found paintballers to be really crafty and smart. Put it to good use.

The problem with 3D printers is you can't print air. It sounds stupid reading it I know. But hollow spaces can be a nightmare because the machine needs to form a so called back bone to keep printing up a skeleton and then a complete surface. Magazines could potentially be a pain in the ass unless done in halves. then you still have to cut out the ribs which support the outside of the shell.

You've also got time constraints. You can save all the money on the product you want but time is what kills you. It can be hours to print a single part depending on complexity and if you crank up the detail on the machine it will take even more. Rushing a job with a printer makes very noticable lines and grooves in parts but if you slow it down and print with more detail it can be very smooth.

Many paintball parts have the potential to printed but I'd stick with more inconsequential parts like the OP. Btw grip looks good.

Bah, replied to a necro, fuck it 3D printing is still going strong in paintball concerning Simons Hopper.

The problem with 3D printers is you can't print air. It sounds stupid reading it I know. But hollow spaces can be a nightmare because the machine needs to form a so called back bone to keep printing up a skeleton and then a complete surface.

Yes, I know this is a necro.

This is why SLS printers are the master race. Not only do you get much higher quality parts, but you can easily print hollow parts because the powder bed supports the layer above this. Unfortunately most SLS printers are very expensive, but you can use a service like Shapeways to get SLS parts for fairly cheap. Also the SLS patent recently expired, which means we may see some cheaper DIY SLS printers in the near future.

ok guys I have been 3d printing and CAD Designing for quite a while now. And after looking over this thread I would like to fix some of the misconceptions about 3d printing.

When 3d printing is it limited to a plastic material? Can you make soft rubber type things? Print up some reballs haha.

First There is rubber plastic but It is mostly experimental currently. There are some that have recently been released but they would not work for the purposes of reballs.

3D Print everything if given the chance. You could actually make quite a bit of money 3D printing your own "hopper shells" Magazines for Mag fed guns, pod

Hopper shells and magizines would be possibilities and are actually reality. But it is not very convenient in the way of magizines becasue they have complex shapes and designs that work best with molds. However it is achivable with 3d printing it is a much more complex process than that of a normal print.

I really want a 3d printer, i just need to get better at designing on computers.

3d printing is incredible technology. It is great but a few tips if you plan on becoming a printer.

#1 Don't buy the first printer you see for a good price. My first printer was a crappy old reprap that I had to rebuild after the previous owner put it own ebay as slightly used.

#2 If you are not mechanically inclined STAY AWAY from DYI or any Reprap. I understand that many reprap printers are nice because they are cheap and some work very well but for your first printer it is not worth the headache.

#3 Don't get discouraged. 3d Printing is a very inexact art that takes a long time to fully understand. I have been working with mine for a very long time and still don't have perfection in every print.

#4 Fails Happen. If you are new to printing then it may happen alot. But Remember 99.99% of the time it is USER ERROR.

#5 I would suggest if you are looking for a printer to check out the SeemeCNC Orion. It is a incredible printer for a price tag around $1350 and works great straight out of the box in 20 min you could be printing. #6 If you want to learn about design get a Autodesk software. I use a mac and Inventor Fusion is around $30 and It does almost as much as the $1000 software.

#6 Finally I will say that even if you don't want to get into design go to thingiverse.com a website run by makerbot there are designs for almost everything and has a great community.

Klub, or any other people who are interested in getting into 3d printing I would be happy to help you and answer questions. In fact Please PM me before you look into 3d printing to ask the opinion of a 3d printer. It would pain me if anyone here would have to start 3d printing in as hard of a way as I did. I wont go into more detail here because that is a story for another time.

The problem with 3D printers is you can't print air. It sounds stupid reading it I know. But hollow spaces can be a nightmare because the machine needs to form a so called back bone to keep printing up a skeleton and then a complete surface. Magazines could potentially be a pain in the ass unless done in halves. then you still have to cut out the ribs which support the outside of the shell.

You've also got time constraints. You can save all the money on the product you want but time is what kills you. It can be hours to print a single part depending on complexity and if you crank up the detail on the machine it will take even more. Rushing a job with a printer makes very noticable lines and grooves in parts but if you slow it down and print with more detail it can be very smooth.

Many paintball parts have the potential to printed but I'd stick with more inconsequential parts like the OP. Btw grip looks good.

Bah, replied to a necro, fuck it 3D printing is still going strong in paintball concerning Simons Hopper.

While some of this is true to a point I would like to clear this up . This "BackBone" is called support material. In some cases yes it can be a pain to clean up. But if you plan out your printing settings correctly and THINK before you press print. In most cases if you setup your print in a smart fashion then the Support material many times comes right off.

Next although many printers may not be able to print very quickly with high quality. Speed is not the biggest control on quality/ resolution. You see as extrusion based printers move they extrude a hot plastic while the end effector moves the extruder. The printer moves in layers and these layers seperate a 2D drawing from a 3D part. So When you have taller layers to shorten the amount of time to print a 3d object then the resolution will be lowered. Layer Height is the biggest factor in resolution. While Speed of the end effector moving does effect it, as long as you work within the recommended parameters of the machine then you should work well.

Next it is true that some parts just were not made for printing. When it comes to strength of prints you can increase the infill from hollow (0%) to solid ( 100% ). You see most prints aren't entirely solid on the inside. They are normally partially hollow with from a average of 30% in most cases when it doesn't have to withstand much stress.

The problem with 3D printers is you can't print air. It sounds stupid reading it I know. But hollow spaces can be a nightmare because the machine needs to form a so called back bone to keep printing up a skeleton and then a complete surface.

Yes, I know this is a necro.

This is why SLS printers are the master race. Not only do you get much higher quality parts, but you can easily print hollow parts because the powder bed supports the layer above this. Unfortunately most SLS printers are very expensive, but you can use a service like Shapeways to get SLS parts for fairly cheap. Also the SLS patent recently expired, which means we may see some cheaper DIY SLS printers in the near future.

Well SLS printers are "Technically" the master race. That is for manufacturing and large professional engineering companies. Theres are a few printers that aren't OBNOXIOUS and are just overpriced. But the thing is however SLS may be nicer it is also a HELL of a lot more of a pain in the ass to work correctly. There are companies that managed to manufacture nice working machines after Years of working for it and I understand it is a nice working product but in the way of "Paintball Printing" SLS is just inconvenient and not built for Applied forces and engineering as much as for High Quality models. Also I would like to add that SLS also uses support material. It cant magically go over overhangs.

I hope you appreciate my writeup as I did put some Time into this. If you have any questions about 3D printing or want to learn more/ help with your printer and troubleshooting. I would be happy to help. PM me here or on MCarterBrown where I spend more of my time nowadays.

Believe it or not I have barely Scratched the surface in explaining 3d printing. I would be happy to go in depth more at another time.

Firstly. SLS printers range from plastic to metal. Yes technically they could be the strongest way to 3d print. But that is if you have tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars burning a hole in your pocket. ALL sls is too expensive atm to be comparable to the price of the 3d printers that we are talking about.

Also Yes there are ways to acquire nice software for free. But they can be a long or inconvenient process and normal Autodesk inventor isn't compatible with mac. At my school we need to have a windows driver installed on the mac minis and have to switch between them to use Inventor.

Scum do you 3d print/ do you own a printer or SLS printer? I am curious because you seem to be pretty one sided as if you have had a bad experience with a extrusion based printer.

And I've never printed on any 3D printer. I'm just a fan of SLS because it seems a lot more refined and most third party printing services use SLS anyway.

Yes It is true. But the truth is that normal printers can print very well. Just because its not as perfect as printers over 100 times as expensive doesnt mean they are total crap. Don't knock it unless you try it is the saying I think

And I've never printed on any 3D printer. I'm just a fan of SLS because it seems a lot more refined and most third party printing services use SLS anyway.

Yes It is true. But the truth is that normal printers can print very well. Just because its not as perfect as printers over 100 times as expensive doesnt mean they are total crap. Don't knock it unless you try it is the saying I think

I'm not knocking it, I'm just saying SLS is a better for hollow parts and things that need support.